Cain's Crusaders

by T. R. Harris

  “Oh please, don’t kill me, you … you scunium!” Adam maintained his smile as he chanted the Yakilian word for asshole. The anger grew even more in the alien, and Adam saw him begin to squeeze the trigger. Past the safety point, the trigger became stiffer; Foruka struggled more, before finally placing a finger from his other hand on the trigger as well.

  Anytime now, Adam thought. He stretched out his smile even wider, baring his teeth. He continued to stare at the crime lord with a fierce intensity, challenging him.

  Finally the trigger depressed – and all hell broke loose in the room!

  First, the explosion from the shot came with incredibly deafening boom, intensified by the confined space of the office, something aliens were not used to when compared to the softer poof of their flash weapons. Next, the recoil threw the massive handgun back toward Foruka, compressing the bones in his right forearm to such a degree that they shattered, exploding outward at the weakest point and penetrating the skin in a dozen places with splinters of thin, Yakilian bone.

  Foruka dropped the weapon on the desk and collapsed into his chair, not even screaming out in pain as the shock of his injuries overwhelmed him. He held what remained of his arm in his left hand, staring at it with impossibly wide eyes, his right forearm now forming a ninety-degree angle to the rest of his limb. And there was blood everywhere.

  Next, Adam stood up, breaking the thin wooden chair into kindling as he did so. He tore the bindings from his hands and then reached across the table to recover his weapon. Aiming to his right, he let loose with another deafening shot to the chest of the alien guard standing next to the table, a creature who had been stunned into inaction by the noise and bloody consequence of Foruka firing the S&W. Following that, Adam whipped the gun under his left arm and shot the other Yakilian – Hicun – in the face. The hollow-point, .44-caliber round passed effortlessly through the thin skin of the alien and then expanded outward, literally blowing away the entire skull of the creature. As Hicun fell to the floor, Adam was amused to see that only a flimsy – yet perfectly formed – yellow-tinted mask of the alien’s face remained.

  Adam brought the gun up to his lips and blew away imaginary smoke from the barrel. “Yippee ki-yay,” he chanted.

  For his part, Foruka was completely unaware of the death of his two guards, still engrossed in the shattered remains of his arm and muttering to himself in words the translator could not decipher. Adam brought the weapon up and sighted down the barrel at the alien’s head.

  “By the way, Foruka, I am Adam Cain, not that you’re going to live long enough to remember. Hasta la vista, baby!” then he pulled the trigger.

  Now that the deed was done, Adam knew it would take the other natives in the complex a few more seconds to react to the unfamiliar sounds coming from inside the office, but after that it would be swarming with armed and angry Yakilians.

  In the two-thirds gravity of Yaki, Adam ran quickly toward the outer side of the office, identified by windows set high up in the wall, letting in the pale yellow light of the Yaki star. He lowered his shoulder, and without slowing down, barreled into the wall like a fullback hitting a defensive line, breaking through it with little effort.

  Again, Adam’s pre-mission research had paid off, revealing to him that most Yakilian structures were built with vertical supports spaced at four-foot intervals. And even if he had been unlucky enough to encounter one of the wall studs, with the lower density of the wooden fibers on the planet, they would have easily shattered, just as did the covering wallboard. The outer skin of the building was made of a porous, concrete-like material and that, too, crumbled easily as Adam exploded through the wall and out into the open.

  However, what Adam had not counted on was that he would be three stories up when he broke through the wall.

  He exploded through the side of a building that sat on the slope of a steep hill and found he was flying through the air, arching toward the face of another building across a narrow alleyway. He managed to turn his back just before impacting the red stone surface, and even though a portion of the wall cracked and caved in slightly, the impact still knocked the air from his lungs, stunning him temporarily. But now he was falling, and even in two-thirds gravity, it was still at a pretty good clip.

  On the surface of Yaki, his normal 180-pound frame weighed in at only 120-pounds, so he braced his muscles for a landing on the concrete surface of the alley. He hit the street and rolled, lessening the impact of the landing on his knees. When he stood, he was uninjured and in an alleyway that formed an artery between two busy streets. The Smith & Wesson was still held firmly in his right hand, the green dot of the laser sight dancing erratically on the wall of the neighboring building. Adam smiled, and with his thumb turned off the radical-misaligned targeting laser.

  From experience, Adam knew that most aliens used computer targeting for their hand-held flash weapons, so he had gambled that Foruka would instinctively rely on the laser sight of the S&W, rather than use his own judgment when aiming the weapon. Therefore, Adam had set the sight a good eight inches or more off-center. Provoking Foruka to use his own weapon against him had been an integral – yet risky – part of his plan, yet it had worked flawlessly.

  Adam’s research had also revealed that the Yakilian bone structure was much weaker than that of a Human, and that it probably couldn’t withstand the recoil from the massive .44-caliber round. He had been right about that, too, and the results were even better than he’d anticipated.

  For Adam Cain, Human-Superman, this was Mission Accomplished.

  Now all he had to do was find a way to get off the planet….

  Adam heard the panicked voices of Yakilians coming through the gaping hole in the warehouse wall he’d just made, and when he looked up he saw a horned-headed alien emerge and aim an MK flash weapon in his general direction. It would take the targeting computer of the weapon about a second to lock onto his position, so in the interim, Adam aimed the .44 at his attacker and dropped him with accurate, canon-like blast to the forehead.

  That should make them think twice about sticking their heads through there, Adam thought. This is kinda like a game of whack-an-alien!

  But just then, he heard the sound of dozens of footfalls on the concrete surface at street level coming from both ends of the alley; he was trapped, and with only two rounds remaining in the cylinder.

  Adam reached behind his left ear and felt for the small round bump under the skin; he pressed it and heard a faint click as the communicator was activated.

  “Riyad, where am I?” he spoke into the alleyway.

  “I have you about twenty miles out – I’m on my way.”

  “Better hurry, they have me trapped in an alley and I’m low on ammo.”

  “Two minutes. Do you see any place to land?”

  All Adam could see were the steep walls of the surrounding buildings hugging the hills in every direction, yet none were over five or six stories tall. “Just buildings, so come in on gravity. You’ll be able to take off the roofs on all the ones around me.”

  “You’re saying we’re going for a gravity extraction?” Adam could almost hear the smile in Riyad Tarazi’s voice through the communicator.

  “We practiced this; it should work.”

  “It’s your call, my friend. I envy the ride – deploying netting now.”

  The alleyway was devoid of even the most ubiquitous of dumpster or storage crate, leaving Adam out in the open and vulnerable. Foruka’s Yakilians had arrived at the opposite ends of the alley and sent a few un-targeted flash bolts around the corners and in his general direction. As it was with nearly all aliens, they were terrible shots without a targeting computer, so Adam simply sent a shot in the direction of the nearest corner to drive them back. Once Riyad appeared overhead in the Phoenix, the destruction wrought by the use of a gravity drive within city limits would serve as the best cover he could hope for. But in the meantime, the aliens had confiscated his additional ammo and now all he had left was a sin
gle round before his impressive weapon became just a heavy piece of stainless steel. Even with that, if the natives came close enough, it would serve as a very effective hammer.

  Just then, Adam heard a sharp crackling sound coming from the left end of the alley. His eyes widened, as a sparkling ribbon of white-hot electricity suddenly began tumbling towards him, like a ten-foot long snake suffering from an angry epileptic seizure. The electric snake rolled down the alley, closing the distance rapidly while Adam watched in horror as the twists and contortions of the deadly weapon were impossible to gauge. It was coming right at him and he had no place to hide.

  Damn this alien universe and their fascination with electricity!

  At the last moment, Adam chose the only path of escape he could think of … and he jumped straight into the air. In the lighter gravity of Yaki, he reached nearly ten feet in his leap, and the whipping coil swung under him, missing his dangling feet by mere inches. He dropped back to the surface and watched the coil continue to roll away and exit onto the main street at the other end of the alley.

  One of Foruka’s Yakilian gangsters came around the corner of the building where the coil had originated, armed with a flash rifle and confident that the electric snake had cleared out the alleyway. Adam greeted him with the final round from the S&W. The bullet struck the goat-faced creature in the right shoulder, severing the arm from his body and throwing the rest of the bloody corpse back into the rush of other Yakilians beginning to round the corner. They all fell back, diving for cover, as the severed arm continued to spasm on the ground, a gruesome reminder of the awesome stopping power of the Smith & Wesson.

  Riyad’s arrival in the Phoenix was none too soon … and impossible to miss.

  To his relief, Adam looked up to see the delta-shaped spacecraft begin its descent toward the surface. As it dropped closer to the tops of the buildings, loud rumbling and ripping sounds could be heard as the roofs began to be torn from their supports, drawn inexorably upwards toward the series of gravity singularities forming far above the rapidly approaching spacecraft. In a matter of seconds, the contest between the alien-built structures and the gravity-wells was lost, and massive sections of roof, walls and interiors began to fly skyward in a reverse downpour of debris. The alleyway was quickly filled with clouds of dust drawn in from the surrounding area, dust that soon began to form into torrents of tornatic columns reaching up to and beyond the spacecraft.

  Adam could feel the air being sucked from his lungs, as well as the tug of gravity from above. He crouched down, and with a powerful burst from his legs, jumped upwards into the air. With an assist from the ship’s gravity well, he gained altitude quickly, easily reaching the third or fourth stories of the buildings on either side of the alley, their own upper stories now completely torn off.

  But it still wasn’t enough – he began to fall back toward the surface. “More power, Riyad!” he cried out, watching the surface of the alley speed toward him.

  And then, when about ten feet from the surface, he felt a greater tug in the opposite direction. As he began to climb again, he struggled to gain his breath, but soon found there was thicker and dirtier air all around him.

  The bottom of the large spaceship grew rapidly as Adam was pulled upward. He could also see the large, circular form of the netting placed at the exact center of the ship, its own surface pulled taunt and concaved against the pull of the gravity well. If he was to survive, he would have to hit the net dead on.

  Adam was carried upward in a black cloud of debris, and then just as he approached the netting, he saw a Yakilian off to his right who had also been lifted by the gravity-well. The alien was staring at him with the most startled look Adam had ever seen. Adam didn’t have time to react before he contacted the net and sank into it; the Yakilian missed it by about two feet and impacted the solid metal surface of the underbelly of the spaceship – and turned instantly into a round, red splotch, crushed against the metal by the force of the well.

  Adam grabbed the netting and instantly felt its bands begin to cut into his flesh. He was being pulled through it like dough through a spaghetti maker!

  “I’m on, Riyad! Cut the power and let’s get out of here!”

  Much to his relief, the gravity-well dissolved just as the chemical engines exploded to life. Adam felt a rush of hot air as the ship slid off toward the east, now climbing high above the rooftops of the city.

  And then he began to fall.

  Without the tug of the gravity-well holding him against the netting, the planet Yaki began to take over. Adam reached up just in time to grab hold of one of the long, nylon filaments that made up the net, and then dangled there by one hand as the spaceship picked up speed. “Damnit, Riyad, I’m about to fall off! Do something.”

  Almost immediately, Adam felt the counter gravity from a small well, yet one not nearly as intense as before. He managed to get a better grip on the netting with his other hand and then he looped an elbow through the bands.

  “Are you still there?” Riyad asked, sounding only slightly concerned.

  “Yeah – thanks for asking.”

  “So it worked; that’s something to keep in mind for next time.”

  “Next time it’s your turn, and I’ll be at the controls.”

  “I’m looking forward to it, my brother. They’ve been calling us supermen for long enough. It’s about time we learned how to fly like one. I’ll set us down in the fields about ten miles further on.”

  Chapter 2

  The ship’s four landing pads were deployed, and as soon as the spacecraft was about twenty feet off the surface Adam let go of the netting and fell to the grassy ground below. He fought against the hot rush of the chemical jets and ran for the access ramp Riyad was deploying. Even before it was fully extended, he jumped the ten feet onto it and ran into the ship, slamming the controls that would retract the ramp back into the ship.

  “I’m in … let’s go.”

  “Roger, Captain Cain. Your wish is my command.”

  Thirty seconds later Adam was in the pilothouse and slipping into a seat next to Riyad. Through the forward view screen he could see the blackness of space directly in front of them, as well as the bright, thin glow from the atmosphere of Yaki curving off to the right and left. The darkness grew thicker, and within seconds they were in space.

  Riyad looked over at Adam and did a quick double take. “Checkers anyone?” he asked through his trademark brilliant-white grin.

  Adam could feel the burning from the various squares of red welts that were rapidly forming on his skin, imprints from the netting that had nearly diced him to bits. “Maybe we need to rethink a tarp instead of netting,” Adam said. “If the bands were any thinner, I’d be nothing but a bunch of bloody Adam McNuggets by now.”

  “But it worked – sort of. And I assume Foruka won’t be causing any more trouble for the Expansion?”

  “You know they’ll just replace him, and then it will be business as usual,” Adam said, grimacing as he ran a finger over the welts swelling up on his face.

  “That’s true, but not before there’s a major power struggle for control of his drug empire. That could take a year or two to settle out. Hopefully by then, our friend Kroekus will have worked more of his political magic and brought these disgusting creatures back onto the reservation.”

  “Riyad, you know talk like that is blatantly racist.”

  The swarthy pilot just grunted. “It’s either a political solution … or more of us. The Yakilians will have to make a choice. Either way, I’m fine with it.”

  A monitor on Riyad’s console began to chime. “We were anticipating this, my friend. Four pursuers, closing fast.”

  “Government?”

  “Their transponders would indicate so.”

  “Open a link—”

  “Departing ship, initiate contact!” a bubbling voice burst through the speakers in the pilothouse.

  Adam smiled at Riyad. “They beat me to it.” He fingered the switch. “Th
is is the New Expansion ship Phoenix. We are on a protected mission under authority of the Administrator. I am sending you the coded authorization now.”

  Once Adam had sent the communication, the two Humans sat back and waited to see if the document would be honored. They held out little hope that it would; it had only been honored once before.

  “New Expansion ship Phoenix, this document is not recognized within the Yakilian Triumvirate. The Expansion no longer has authority over our affairs. You have just caused the destruction of a portion of Mufoon, as well as the deaths of dozens of our citizens, including the most-revered Jakian Foruka. You are therefore ordered to reverse course and return to Yaki immediately.”

  Adam pulled up the long-range monitors showing the four ships flanking them, two on each side, and could see the distinctive hotspots on each ship as they charged up their flash weapons.

  “It looks like they don’t expect us to comply,” Riyad said, himself busy with the controls for the Phoenix’s own weapons.

  “Yaki vessels,” Adam announced. “Our authority supersedes that of your system. We will not comply, and I must warn you any action against us will result in the most severe of consequences.”

  “Very well,” the bubbling voice responded immediately. “By my authority, I declare you fugitives from justice and evoke Law 17. You will be destroyed immediately.”

  Adam could see the four Yakilian ships had engaged their defensive diffusion screens and that their flash weapons were now fully charged. Any second now they would release bolts of blue-hot energy towards the Phoenix.

  However, what the Yakilians did not know was that they would be firing upon a very special ship in its own right….

  With nearly unlimited funds provided by the Administrator of the New Expansion, Adam and his small band of Human warriors had managed to design and build the most-advanced starship in the galaxy. Among its many refinements, the Phoenix boasted not four, but eight focusing rings capable of generating gravity-wells in as many directions. And not only that, the internal compensators were the fastest ever built, allowing for radical vector shifts that would have normally crushed a crew to death before the compensating gravity-wells could save them.